


Darling lagomorph

by flambydelrabies



Category: Tales of Crestoria
Genre: Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Violence, Snapshots, Suicidal Thoughts, filling in the blanks about aegis' backstory on my own, going where bamco will not dare, mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flambydelrabies/pseuds/flambydelrabies
Summary: Lagomorphs —A widespread mammalian order consisting of rabbits and hares, or Leporidae.Aegis did not want to be someone's boy; he wanted to be a knight, so a knight he became. He then discovered very quickly that people break in the strangest of ways.An introspective glance into Aegis' past, spanning from his childhood through the events of the game.
Relationships: Aegis Alver/Vicious
Comments: 10
Kudos: 83





	Darling lagomorph

**Author's Note:**

> This fic may just be my magnum opus- I put an immeasurable amount of work and my own heart into making it into what it is, and I hope that you read it and enjoy it, or at the very least, that it makes you feel something. Quite a bit of this is from my own experience, particularly of coming out as a lesbian when I was fourteen and all the perils that came along with that. Please mind the tags; this fic includes mild depictions of violence, homophobia, brief non-graphic sexual content, suicidal ideation, a lot of heavy angst, and most significantly, implied sexual assault.
> 
> Please also note that this was written when the game only had six chapters, so anything and everything in here is subject to be debunked or otherwise age poorly. However, these are my own headcanons and the story I've created with them, so take them as you will. 
> 
> Lastly, this fic would not have been possible without my dear friends Ageha @ageha_nacht, Brynn @fuzzpeach, and most of all, Ariel @maskedhero, the latter of whom was awesome enough to let me adapt some of the things she'd written herself into this fic. 
> 
> This fic was written for Aegis' birthday, but then I ended up finishing it much faster than I expected and couldn't wait to post it, so happy very early birthday to our favourite lagomorph <3
> 
> Now with [art by the forever lovely Sorunort](https://twitter.com/sorunort/status/1348420318780649475) to accompany.

( _ **zero:** to carve out shelter_)

Aegis curled around himself in bed, watching his chest rise, then fall in soft, rhythmic motion. Innocent boy, hardly a day over seven years old, still yet unbroken and his parents’ greatest pride. Starry-eyed with a heart that rattled in his chest, he loved them more than he had words to describe, so instead, every night, he’d feign slumber by folding himself across the floor to feel his mother tuck his frail body beneath the sheets and plant kisses against his porcelain skin.

Poverty meant nothing to the family of three because they had _love,_ and that was all they’d ever needed to lead a life of sunlight and happiness. And yet, still, no matter what might happen to him or to his parents, both grinding their brittle bones to exhaustion toiling over their shop, Aegis always knew that he could call their worn-out house a home. 

For all the things he lacked, Aegis was happy more often than he wasn’t, living on the second floor of the liquor store his family had dedicated their lives to seeing prosper. Home was a place that smelled like the dull tang of cheap cigarettes and even cheaper whiskey, where the hand-knitted blankets itched and Aegis paid it no mind because every single stitch had been spun with his mother’s love. Home tasted like three-day-old food that they couldn’t afford to throw away, lest they risk losing a meal for their only son. Home had the aroma of sterilization and alcohol hanging heavy on the breath of their patrons the days his parents worked the shop, and it prickled against his nose but it was always _familiar._ Home was warmth and forehead-kisses and the secondhand gifts he’d receive every single birthday. Home was boundless love.

And yet, He couldn’t tell you what home was in any sort of true, literal way-- not one that he could make sense of, at least. All of it existed in little bits and pieces, a kaleidoscope of memories and all the things that had taught him tenderness. All he could say was that it was the glow of the sunset against his face, his rabbit pulse kicking in his chest, and the feeling of rough hands rustling through his satin hair.

A brilliant memory to tear him at the seams, if nothing else, because he’d spend the rest of his life looking for that feeling all over again. Every time he’d reach his stained hands to grasp the only beautiful piece of himself he had left, it would only slip further and further from his putrid fingers.

Reaching, and yet, still, never meeting.

**+**

( _ **one:** my body, muscle and marrow_)

When Aegis was ten his favourite word was justice, and he read his books about robots and crime to the point where his thoughts spun in circles ‘til the moment he drifted to sleep, only to spend the night dreaming of it even more. All he could think about was the dichotomy between good and evil, black and white, justice and pain, as cut-and-dry as a knifepoint’s edge. He indulged in fantasies of righteousness because he felt like even his muscle and marrow were crafted for this alone-- to save the world from the bane of evil.

Alas, these were truly no more than fantasies, and he was no more than a ten-year-old boy trapped in a silly daydream.

Their backwoods town on the outskirts of the kingdom was so dainty, so isolated, a passerby could walk straight through it in a matter of minutes-- they couldn't dream of accessing Vision Central in the middle of the endless forest of bark and trees. He'd killed thousands of imaginary monsters with broken twigs from the yard long before he ever picked up a lance, much less used one to pierce through skin and bone. It would be years before Aegis would hear the word Transgressor, much less have it carved deep above his own heart, but he knew his life's greatest quest was to put an end to sin-- even if he wasn't a magical knight or a robot slated to fight, but a human made only of flesh and blood. 

And still, to his pleasure, he’d met a girl who lived next door to his woodland home who looked hardly older than him at all, her hair the colour of sunrise the same way his shone like moonlight. He told her tales of justice and knights and magic, only for her to say that it was all the most amazing thing she'd ever heard and then play until the sunset spun the sky gold and pink. 

The day following she picked a flower from the forest and tucked it behind his ear, and his cheeks stained the colour of roses. The next, she held his hand until he felt a cold sweat drip down his spine, and she leaned forward to fumble a kiss against his soft lips. She stepped forward, and Aegis stumbled back. 

"What's wrong?" she asked, and there was dejection dulling the sheen in her pale blue eyes. Aegis felt his stomach lurch and twist. 

"You're the boy, and I'm the girl. That's how it's supposed to be, right?" 

And Aegis' hands became clammy until he dug his nails into his palms, giving little more of a response than simply "I have to go now, thanks for playing with me today" and backing himself into the door to his family's shop. Fear bubbled out of his mouth like a disease. 

When he clomped up the stairs to his room on unsteady feet, he cried tears that he couldn't explain, tears that flabbergasted even his wavering heart. He didn't want to be someone's boy; he wanted to be a _knight,_ strong enough to save the world and burn out in a blaze. 

That night, he did not feign sleep in hopes of his mother tucking him under the covers with those gentle, softened hands. Instead, he collapsed into bed of his own volition and thought of justice. 

If he was as righteous as he thought himself to be, then why couldn't he kiss her back? 

**+**

( _ **two:** somnambulist_)

Aegis was beginning to think that he might just be broken, maybe. 

Shortly after he’d shed tears of turmoil, he instead became fascinated with the fleeting concept of _romance,_ sneaking into his parents' room to find novels too obscene for one his age, then proceeding to study them like lexicons even as they made his cheeks flush. Surely, love must be more than _'a boy and a girl makes two'_ , but any more nuanced explanation seemed to fall short, slipping beyond the scope of his eleven-year-old mind.

Love was a complicated, fickle equation that seemed to leave him blindsided at every turn; none of the numbers added up, there were no patterns in the scattered algorithms, and every time he thought he'd figured it out it would seem he'd made some sort of critical error along the way-- 

In a strange way, it was a lot like justice, but at least justice he could understand. At least justice was straightforward, and it made _sense._

“Mom,” Aegis said one day, wrapping his arms around his knees while she cleared the scraps from the dinner, too small even for a family of three, “I don’t think I like girls.”

His mother laughed in surprise, letting a plate drop to the table to ruffle a hand through his silver hair. “Why, what makes you say that, Gigi?”

“Because I like justice!” he said back, curling one arm over the other. “I don’t want to be someone’s boy. I want to be a knight.”

“Well, you never know,” Mother said back with a sparkle in her eye, “I thought I’d never like someone that way either, but then--”

Aegis interrupted without so much as a passing glance back. “Mom, I don’t care about any of that stuff. I want to go to knight school.” 

He tried to ignore the way she paused in constriction with a stutter in her breath.

“Aegis, my beautiful boy,” she leaned down on one knee to meet his gaze, tugging the messy hair framing his face behind his ears. “You know we can’t do that. Your father and I, we try so hard, but we can hardly afford to put food on the table.”

“I know,” he said back, and again, he felt sorry enough to cry. “You and Dad do so much for me.” For the first time, home felt not like sunset on his cheeks, but an iron cage.

 _This is the way it’s supposed to be,_ he thought. _Useless boy, never destined for more._

Over the next few years, he noticed the meals on his plate shrinking to scraps, and his birthday presents were often re-gifted from the year before. Neither he nor his parents had bought new clothes in longer than he could remember, and the ones they’d already owned were mended to infinity and back with patches and refurbished seams. He thought nothing of it, toiling away alongside his parents to run the store in the only place he’d ever called home, until the day a gold-speckled envelope arrived from Medagal.

 _Aegis Alver,_ the letter read in glossy, scarlet-tinged calligraphy, _your final tuition payment has been received, and we are pleased to offer you admittance to Medagal’s Knight Academy._

And Aegis let the parchment fall from his hands and drift to the floor, until he dropped to his knees and placed a hand over his eyes like a wedding veil. There was no way he could have been anything but sleepwalking, because this was all too monstrously _big_ to be true.

His father came and helped him back onto his feet with his tough, calloused hands, smiling because they’d just given Aegis exactly what he wanted: a life of righteousness, to vanquish evil for all of time, and exactly what his parents wanted, too: a life better than anything they could have hoped to provide on their own.

Aegis wrapped both arms around his father and wept. Maybe he was broken, but broken things were always fixable.

_Always--_

\--right?

**+**

( _ **three:** better luck_)

Aegis was nothing to Medagal, merely another unfortunate boy who grew up in rags and felt far more at home in dirt pathways than city streets. At the academy he learned to rise when the sun did, eyes still rimmed with red, before dressing in his same pristine, polished uniform as the other trainees lined up against the post and beginning a rigorous day's work.

When his discipline began he started to notice his peers, things about them he'd never thought of anyone before. The way the sinew of their arms flexed when they swung their weapons, the muscles of their chests heaving as they breathed, their sharpened jawlines and toughened hands. Sometimes he found himself staring, thirteen years old and knowing nothing of attraction beyond what he'd read in those godforsaken romance novels he'd sneak into his room and scour under the covers at night. What he felt wasn't normal, he thought, that all the million little pieces he noticed were too small, too minute to be things every trainee saw in their comrades. Instead, he chastised himself for so much as daring to look, and punished himself every time he did. He would not be privy to something so sinful. 

In his first year, he saw nothing of battle, instead spending each and every day on a strict schedule meant to grind routine and military-grade order into their hearts. His eyes still seared at the sunlight that crept through the knights’ quarters, and every morning’s training sessions brought him to the point of exhaustion without fail. Aegis was smaller, scrawnier, than most of the other boys-- another detail he'd noticed, without fail, and he left every session covered with a new constellation of bruises he could trace against his skin with one hand.

“Try again,” they said, after knocking the slender boy from the ground and watching him wince against the stone floor. Aegis rose, still trembling, only to charge with an iron training blade grasped between two hands and then trip over his own two feet.

“Better luck next time, Alver,” his superiors barked back, pointed and cutting. “Next.”

He walked to the end of the line with shame, not daring to meet the snickering faces of his peers, who mocked and jeered at him for his upbringing of dirt and peasantry. He couldn’t tell you why they loved so much to see him fail, for his blade to fumble from his delicate hands or to see his frail body knocked upon the cruel ground.

One day, he’d be a righteous knight and save the innocent. One day, he’d show them all the fire that burned within his heart, and he’d use it to guide his blade to victory.

One day, he’d be a force to be feared. But now, as he withered and shrunk into the coils of his own skin, a rabbit among wolves, the only words he could hear echoing through his head were _better luck next time._

**+**

( _ **four:** being able to feel nothing_)

It was midnight on a routine patrol that Aegis laid eyes on an enforcer for the very first time. He’d learned of Transgressors at the academy, sinners, personifications of all the evil he’d grown up swearing to vanquish. He knew of vision orbs and their purposes, even if the one he'd been gifted upon arrival still felt heavy and foreign over his heart.

Enforcers, however, were something else-- dubious beasts fuelled by tongues of flames and cloaked in white. Something just as evil as the sin they were born from. Pull back the hood and you’d see nothing there but a mass of mana and hate.

That night, it was no more than petty crime, a bag-snatching at knifepoint recorded with a vision orb and broadcast for all to see. Aegis came dashing, iron sword in hand, only to realize he was too late, left with the perfect point in the city’s grid of stone to watch a cloaked enforcer gruesomely filet the condemned from head to toe with the drag of an iron-heavy claw.

Aegis dropped his sword, again, letting it clatter to the ground while he watched with wide eyes, stupefied as the body on the ground bled crimson, the same way he did.

He gave no thoughts to the jabs from his partners on patrol-- _“Come on, never seen an enforcer before?”_ \--because he couldn't look away from the carnage in front of him. They were sinners, he told himself, they had it coming. They had it coming. They had it coming. He repeated it enough that the words bounced through his cerebrum and lost all meaning. It was all he could do not to scream himself hoarse.

“C’mon, Alver, let’s go. Let the enforcers deal with this one.” Aegis felt a hand tug his shoulder, rough and unforgiving, until he joined them in walking back toward the palace with his tongue tied between his teeth.

When he was fourteen, they began stationing him on minor missions, no longer only eating, sleeping, training, and breathing. He’d learned to strategize, and that made him valuable, even with the heart of a hare.

It didn’t get easier watching sinners be torn apart and flayed by personifications of hate; for the first few months, every time he’d see an enforcer he’d feel ill, even when he knew they fought for justice the same way he did. Yet, to his great relief, it did ease with time, even if he hated every second of it. A year into his position, he’d seen the carnage so many times it was like he was watching from outside his body-- like it was something that wasn’t really happening to him, in front of him, around him at all. 

Tonight, he was assigned night watch at the palace, and when he saw an enforcer carve a transgressor to ribbons, he didn’t bat an eye. It wasn’t until he returned to his chambers that he wept for the part of his humanity that seeking justice had stolen from him.

 _They had it coming,_ he thought, even if only to convince himself.

**+**

_(Hey Mom and Dad,_

_It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I promise I’m doing really well here at the academy,_

_and I’m getting really strong. They’re starting to assign me small missions of my own,_

_and apparently once I turn sixteen, I’ll be a full-fledged knight!_

_I hope things have been well at the store. I’m thinking of you all the time,_

_and everything I do, I do it so I can make you proud._

_I love you so much!_ _  
_ _Gigi)_

**+**

( _ **five:** useless boy / err of the fool_)

It was a simple equation: Aegis missed home, and home is where the heart was. Therefore, Aegis’s heart was hollow.

Home was familiar, even as his every recollection of it slipped away one by one. The palace and all the labours of his daily routine had become familiar, too, but that kind of intimacy alone certainly did not make a home. The dirt roads and smell of sterilization were beginning to lapse from his mind, replaced instead by the rise of the castle against the skyline and uniformed soldiers lined perfectly in tow.

The moment he realized he could hardly remember his mother’s laugh, he felt a tremor throughout his body and pleaded with his own mind not to erase the last few beautiful memories he had left. If he didn’t have those last, few beautiful parts of himself, then he had nothing at all.

Instead he marched to one of Medagal’s many libraries with shelves of books stacked together like brick walls, and he found the most obscene tales of romance and love the conservatory had to offer. ‘ _A boy and a girl makes two’,_ even if he couldn’t believe such nonsense on the best of days. He hadn’t the heart or time for romance, much less _sex_ of all things, but scanning the pages of these worn-out paperbacks kept the memories of his childhood alive, even if only for one more fleeting night.

At fifteen years old he’d scour these books in secret, hiding them under his pillow before proceeding to the bar at the edge of town accompanied by the few comrades who treated him like a friend. Dive bars on the outskirts of Medagal often didn’t care when one was underage, much less when they donned a knight’s uniform and walked in with enough confidence to kill. Aegis rarely drank on these nights, opting only to smell the alcohol on his allies’ breaths and think of living on the second floor of a run-down liquor store. Generally, that was enough.

That night, he downed innumerable shots of whiskey, only to feel his face flush and throat scorch just as strongly as his anxious heart. He hated the taste and he hated the burn and he hated the way it made his head feel like it weighed a million pounds, but by now, it was all he could do in pursuit of that one, last delicate part of himself, yet to be hardened by the wicked world.

“C’mon guys, let’s head back to the dorms. Alver looks like he’s about to hurl.”

He wasn’t, but Aegis still appreciated the backhanded care as one of his friends linked their arms and walked Aegis back to his chambers. When everyone else left, the two of them sat side-by-side while the other rubbed Aegis’ back, who then leaned to rest his head against his only source of comfort within those stone walls. Before long, Aegis looked up at his companion with the eyes of a newborn fawn, innocent and longing and everything in between--

“Can I-- can I do something?” He asked, drunken voice frail, reaching to rest his fingertips against the other boy’s thigh. Neither pulled away.

“Sure,” he slurred back, until Aegis’ hands roamed to the sides of his face, gentle even through the cotton of his gloves, and he--

_kissed him._

And that’s when the other jerked backwards, wedging Aegis’ face away from his own, and standing to leave.

“S-sorry, Aegis, I don’t think that we can--” he started, then stopped, only for Aegis to slump his back against the cold masonry behind him and ask himself what in the _hell_ had possessed him to do something so _foolish,_ so _absurd._

“It’s fine, I understand,” Aegis replied without a second thought. He stumbled back to his quarters, only to collapse in exasperation and wallow in his own self-defeat. That night, he discovered the sole reason he wasn’t interested in romance was because it wasn’t women he desired, and that was perhaps the most mortifying thought of all.

The next day, he trained with his superiors in front of all his peers, the same way he always did, only this time, he left behind his iron blade and picked up the lance instead. Aegis took all the rage in his body and channeled it into the tip of his spear, fighting until his boot was planted firmly on his superior’s chest.

He grabbed all the parts of himself he hated and he held them by the trachea, pressing down against windpipes and arteries until suffocated into something he could live with, at least for now. As he looked upon the shocked faces of his comrades with a lance pointed to a man’s throat, he realized he’d killed not only the parts of himself he despised, but the only pieces left of him that were still tender and frail. 

He couldn’t tell which of the two made him more useless.

**+**

_(Hello Mom and Dad,_

_I wanted to let you know that things have been going well for me in my training._

_I’ve decided to take up the lance rather than the sword,_

_and I’m told that in only one more year, my training will be finished._

_Upon its completion, I will be considered a full-fledged Knight of Medagal._

_I promise that one day, I’ll come visit, and we can all have dinner together at the table_

_the way that we used to. You’re in my thoughts._

_Talk to you soon,_

_Aegis)_

**+**

( _ **six:** the meaning of strength_)

On the eve of Aegis’ sixteenth birthday, he had become such a formidable fighter his peers spoke of his lancework only in whispers. The day he brought his superiors to their knees in combat, then turned the lance inwards to kill the child who played make-believe in the forest, Aegis’ world shifted, and he found that those who ridiculed him now treated him with some crass form of half-respect, if one could call it such. The quips and jabs from his comrades ground to a halt and any ounce of heckling stopped along with it. Finally, he was not a boy, but a knight, a silver jackrabbit draped in the skin of a wolf. 

Two weeks after being appointed knight the King himself delegated Aegis the Grand Cross of the Medagalian Knights, the youngest to be crowned into such a position, and in his own mind, the least deserving. He thought of his Commander and the King and he wondered what kind of person they saw in him, why they found him worthy when he saw himself only as filth. He thought of that child from the backwoods town who swore to vanquish evil and wondered what he’d think of someone so hollow standing in his place. Most of all, he thought of the enforcers who once made him retch, and he felt nothing.

_(Most of the time, now, that’s exactly what he felt. Nothing.)_

One day, his wandering eyes spied a woman in shackles and an earth-speckled smock, prodded to the King’s chambers as if cattle, and even he found himself taken by her beauty; the moment he laid eyes on her he felt as though he'd seen something forbidden, for he knew not who she was, but still, that he was unworthy. 

She looked like she wanted to cry, but fear held her back, and that was perhaps the saddest part of it all. He almost wanted to cry, too, knowing the King’s brutality and her unfortunate fate, but he mustn’t, for he was no longer a boy, but a knight, and a knight’s honour lies in his strength.

The day he would meet Rebecca, he would look back on this moment in shame, regretful that he did not take her hand and flee, rescuing her from a loveless prison of gold and jewels. And still, as he looked upon her pleading eyes, he did nothing, and the oath he took the day he was knighted sat rotting in the pit of his chest.

Maybe that tender part of him still existed, deep down. He knew not how to find it anymore.

**+**

( _ **seven:** break or be broken_)

Aegis kept his secret hidden in his throat, latched, chained, and forever held fugitive when he swallowed the key to the pit of his stomach. He could cower into all those delicate spots where his skin met his veins, and yet, no amount of hide-and-seek with himself could keep him safe forever.

He saw the way the women of the court looked at him with their wandering gazes, as if taking him apart with their eyes alone, stripping his body from his uniform down to the pale, tender skin beneath. Noblewomen of the palace now leered with lust the same way he’d stared at his peers as a trembling, adolescent boy, and he placed a hand over his eyes to shield him from each one, for he knew he could not give them what they sought. He felt an overwhelming sense of grief for all that he could have been.

 _‘A boy and a girl makes two’,_ they always said of love and sex. And yet, who was he if his every desire betrayed those unspoken rules?

One by one, women collapsed at Aegis’ feet, falling hopelessly in love with his pretty face and some fool’s paradise they’d created in his amber eyes. Every time, he would say he was sworn to knighthood and nothing more, that love, duty, and justice could never weave into anything he knew would satisfy him, and each noblewoman would leave with eyes dampened with futile tears. They were no more than distractions to his sworn duty.

And thus, the rumours of Sir Alver, Grand Cross of the Medagalain Knights began to spin tirelessly through the palace, then soon, all of the capitol-- newly eighteen years old and married to the lance, putting his infatuation with justice beyond the yearning for a lover.

“So, Alver, you’re one of those _celibate knight types,_ huh?” a subordinate asked, his husky voice dripping with putrid sarcasm. Aegis felt his brow twitch.

“That’s Sir Alver, Grand Cross to you,” he replied without a shred of emotion in his fickle tone. He was beginning to tire of all the interrogations about his private life, and he was certainly not in the mood to play nice after a tiresome day of working with the new recruits.

“So, what, Sir Alver, Grand Cross can’t get a girl, or are you just too busy, uh, _playing with that spear of yours--_ ” the other man smiled, poisonous, “--to even bother?”

Aegis’ hands moved quickly, curling his fingers around the hollow of his lance with the speed of prey fleeing predator. Within seconds, the tapered blade rested against his subordinate’s neck.

“Well, Kellen,” he said, drawing out every word, all while basking in the other’s fear, “If you’re so concerned with what I do in bed, then why don’t you join me tonight?”

His words were a threat as much as they were a challenge, and a Knight's honour meant he could back down from neither. That night, they met in Aegis’ chambers, both inexperienced and so very young, only for Aegis to tear the uniform from the heat of his body and straddle the boy before him, kissing and sucking and rocking into each other until they both finished in a shuddering climax. Kellen had returned to his own dormitory before the sun rose, and Aegis donned lilac welts on his pale neck that peeked just above his collar.

The next day, there were whispers among the court of who had deflowered Medagal’s chaste knight and he would address none of them, treating every word like a fickle insect buzzing in his ear. The day after, Aegis was stripped of his title Grand Cross and crowned Commander of the Medagalian Knights.

That night, he curled around himself on the scratchy, army-issued blankets that lined his bed and thought of justice, whatever it meant anymore. 

For the first time in years, he felt frightened, and he felt unstoppable. How those two things could coalesce so perfectly was a mystery.

**+**

_(Dear Mr. and Ms. Alver,_

_I hope this letter finds you well. I hoped to give you an update about the happenings here in Medagal and my current situation._

_S_ _ince we last spoke, I underwent a promotion to Commander of Knights and will be working directly under the supervision of the King._

_This news has been most excellent for me and I hope that you feel the same way._

_Within this envelope you will find 20,000 Gald,_

_which should, theoretically, be enough to support your livelihood._

_I send my regards and dearest love._

_Aegis Alver, Knight Commander of Medagal)_

**+**

( _ **eight:** glass castle_)

The evening Aegis was summoned to the King's chambers, he discovered very quickly that people break in the strangest of ways. 

He had been instructed to come alone, not to tell a single soul of their meeting, and the Commander of Knights could only obey the same way he'd been trained from adolescence. His footsteps reverberated through the hall like a heartbeat that mirrored his own before stopping at the door and knocking, echoing down to the frame with a dull timbre. 

"You requested me, Your Majesty?" he said, back arched taut with a fist resting over his heart, ever the dutiful knight. 

King Gadel smiled, and his vile eyes reeked of poison. "Yes, Sir Alver. I assume you've been privy to the rumours circulating about you throughout the ranks."

A cold bead of sweat dripped down his neck, enough of a chill to freeze down the curve of his spine. Of course he'd heard the intrusive rumours of his private life, and he'd crushed each one beneath his heel the moment they were brought to his attention. Alas, the palace and all its inhabitants were beginning to catch on, guessing and prodding at his secret before he had a chance to spit the key from the pit of his stomach and unlock it himself. 

"Please, Your Majesty, pay such things no mind. Despite what you may hear, I am the most honourable of your knights."

"I know, Aegis. And that is why I called you here." Gadel reclined, lifting one leg over the other and resting a fist against his sunken cheek. "I would like you to strip for me."

Aegis' mouth fell to a gape and he found himself doubling backwards, nearly tripping over his own two feet. "I-- I’m sorry, Your Majesty!?" 

"You are certainly a beautiful boy, Aegis. Now strip, or I will do it for you. This is your King's order."

Fear coursed through his veins like a virus, a critical error to be quarantined, but he still felt his heart beating a million miles an hour in the palm of his hands. And yet, he had not the will to defy his King; surely, his honour would be his death just as much as it was his life. 

He did as he was told, and with every moment that passed, he felt a piece of his rabbit soul leave him, never to return. 

  
  


_(It is possible for a lagomorph to die of fright; exposure to_

_extreme stimuli can lead to a heart attack and put a rabbit into shock,_

_causing sudden death. It can take several days for the rabbit to die this_

_way, and it does not happen often, but it is quite possible_

_for a lagomorph to die of fear alone.)_

  
  


When the King had his way he threw Aegis from his quarters, battered as he collapsed to the mosaic of stone beyond the door. His eyes burned, his cheeks burned, his body burned, and all he could feel was that sharp, searing pain, pain, _pain,_ like a thousand needles piercing him to the core. He'd cry, if he still had even the smallest piece of himself left to give. 

"Oh, my, Sir Alver, did you come from the King’s chambers?" 

He looked up with weary eyes to see the woman who was once shackled in rags now decked in gold and jewels beyond her wildest dreams. Earthen hair framed her heart-shaped face and accentuated the rose in her cheeks. 

Aegis only trembled, giving no response but the droop of his eyelids as he curled around himself against the floor, the same way he'd lay under those too-itchy blankets as a child or a jaded adolescent under army sheets and dream of justice. Now, at eighteen, he hardly believed it existed. 

"Here. Let me help you," she said and extended a single, frail hand. Aegis reached back, though reluctantly, and trembled. 

"Who are you?" he asked, having seen no more than her slender frame lurking the palace with sullied eyes. They filled with sorrow once more the moment she answered. 

"My name is Rebecca. Queen Rebecca in title, though I am little more than the King's plaything in practice."

 _I suppose that makes two of us now,_ he thought, but bit his tongue hard enough he worried he'd choke on the blood. Instead he lifted himself to his feet, grimacing, like someone had reached in and stolen a piece of him that had always been there. 

"Please, Sir Alver, let me take you to my chambers and bandage you. May I call you Aegis?" 

He looked back, the shame in his eyes shrouded by the silver bangs hanging low against his face. "Yes, Your Highness."

"Please," she said, taking him by the hand. Yet another action that felt all but forbidden. "You may call me Rebecca." 

Their footsteps echoed through the hall, arrhythmic in nature, and Aegis knew, deep down, that he would always be prey to the wolves. 

Later that week, he'd be approached by another subordinate whose half-smile turned evil the moment their eyes locked; "I heard that you don't fancy women, Sir Alver," he said with a filthy grin.

Aegis glared back, sharp enough to rival the lance between his fists. " _Commander Alver,_ and that is no way to speak to your superiors. I should reprimand you on sight."

"So, Commander," the smirk on the other man’s smug face grew only wider, even when he knew he'd face punishment for such. "If you don't like women, then what do you like?" 

Aegis' eyes turned sharp, burning and hostile just like his heart. He drew his lance toward the other knight and rested it precariously over the artery in his neck. 

"Justice," he replied, the same words he spoke to his mother long ago. "I don't like women. I like justice."

There it was, his secret spit from his throat at long last, but yet, it still remained only a half-truth at best. He'd spoken of justice so many times, it rolled off the tongue like it was second nature, a speech he'd memorized and recited until his face became tinged the same blue of his coat. Only now, he wasn't so certain; he spoke so much of it the word had lost its meaning, just another jumble of letters and syllables he lived by, because he saw it as a clause of human nature. 

When he returned to his dormitory in the nobles' quarters, he gazed upon the still-violet bruises littering his body and tried not to feel weak, not to let the overwhelming sense of failure pale his face. 

What he'd never admit was that he ceased to believe in justice anymore, and that to him, it was just another children's fairytale, a lie sold on a silver platter and fed to him until he was full. 

Justice was a myth, too. 

**+**

_(Greetings Mr. and Ms. Alver,_

_I h_

  
  


_Aegis stopped there and let pen fall to paper,_

_splattering tiny stains of scarlet ink across_

_his snow-white gloves and the wooden table._

_There was no use writing to them anymore, he thought._

_They would not be happy with the person he'd become.)_

**+**

( _ **nine:** bones in the water_)

Aegis was called to the King’s chambers at the same time every week following, and he always left stumbling like a hare with broken feet, wandering across the palace to Rebecca’s quarters-- a cell of silver and gold more than any semblance of a home.

 _Home--_ he dared not think of his own, now, for he knew his heart would only crack and shatter further. All he knew now were the frost-stricken walls of Medagal and the grasp of the frigid hands that bound his wrists.

“Dearest Aegis,” the Queen said, brows turned upwards as she tended to him, “tell me, have you ever been in love?”

“I’m afraid not.” He shook his head softly, wincing at the sting of saline against the torn skin on his back. “There were once rumours around the court that I was married to knighthood. I believe, in a way, that there is some truth to that.”

“You are an honourable man, Aegis. My most trusted confidant and dearest friend.” Rebecca wrapped a sheet of gauze along his wounds before turning and brushing the tips of her fingers against his cheek. “But yet, do you not long to live your days alongside the one you love? Do you not long for the touch of a woman?”

He felt his stomach flounder inside of him, wallowing as if seasick. She hadn’t heard the rumours of his desires in her isolation, and he had not the heart to tell her they were true. He swallowed before answering. “Perhaps one day I will choose to share my life with someone, but in this moment, I am wed to my duty.”

Aegis donned his buttoned-down shirt and smoothed his crumpled uniform once more. Rebecca did not say another word, and neither did he.

The day he was called to the dungeons to put an end to a band of transgressors who’d infiltrated the palace, he took the sharpest lance he owned in hand and scurried as fast as his legs would carry him. He was born for such a task; his spearwork was so formidable it was spoken of even beyond the kingdom, and his battle tactics feared.

Surely no match for the Commander of Knights, he thought, and he’d never been more wrong.

He saw Rebecca’s face the moment he arrived and she grabbed his hands and pleaded, tears lining the whites of her eyes, her distress a plague, and yet, her face no less beautiful, and--

_please please please aegis,_

_take me away from here,_

_we’ll run away together and_

_make a life all our own,_

_just take my hand and--_

“Your Highness! What are you saying!?” Aegis gawked back. She must be joking, he thought,

only to see the sincerity scribed across her face as if drawn in blood,

or the scarlet ink he used to write letters to his parents, and--

_you’re the boy and i’m the girl_

_that’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it_

She locked her fingers around his own and dragged him toward the light, a new life they could lead together, and--

  
  


“Come with us, too, Transgressors! We’ll all escape from the palace _to g e t h e_

**_SQUELCH_ ** _//_ **_GASP_ ** _//_ **_CHOKE_ **

And suddenly, she was on the ground, sword pierced through her body, and it all happened so quickly Aegis couldn’t even register the moment her hand dropped from his, or when his clothes became coated crimson with her blood.

“Wha--” he stopped, eyes wide and face white with terror, for he couldn’t even scream, and even if he did, it would change nothing.

Everything was a fractured mess of tears and what little mourning he could manage, for it was no sooner the blade came down that the King arrived and his own body was marred with the Stain that damned him to hell. Rebecca looked over at him as his heart burned, chest searing like a million suns trapped beneath his skin, and she whispered

_aegis please tell me you love me_

_even if it’s a lie please please please--_

and he couldn’t say it back because he couldn’t say _anything_ back at all. His mouth stayed silent, open and closing, jaw dangling uselessly from his skull as he watched her die. Moments later the dungeon was engulfed by white cloaks, foul beasts made of hate, and this time, they were here not for petty sinners but for him, to take his life. He ran his hand over his Stain, felt it sear against his bloodied glove and collapsed gracelessly to his knees, waiting to die. He watched them bare their claws, the same ones he’d watched rend so many people in two. Sinners, just like him now.

And somehow, he was spared, against both his wishes and the will of the people. He felt a bullet graze against his cheek, blazing red just like everything else, and a calloused hand grapple against his shoulder. A man with ash-black hair and a Stain he wore with pride pushed him from the enforcers’ grasp.

“C’mon, pretty boy, we gotta go, unless you actually _want_ those enforcers to cut ya to pieces.”

He gazed upon her body one, final time as he ran, so serene with beauty unmatched even in death. He could no longer grieve, for the enforcers drew nearer with every breath. He reached for her, but Vicious' rough hands held him back, frozen in time for just one moment until dragged from sight. _Reaching, but yet, still, never meeting;_ another sad, sorry metaphor for a sad, sorry boy.

When the Stain of Guilt appeared above his heart, he thought not of himself but his parents, who sacrificed everything so he could be branded a sinner-- he thought of not only the Queen's death, but his own. 

Oh, how easy it was to end a life. 

_(run, rabbit, run)_

**+**

( _ **ten:** incision_)

Aegis had been branded a transgressor for exactly one week, and he learned more about sin and righteousness in that single week alone than he did in the eighteen years prior. 

He had no strong opinions regarding his new traveling companions-- at least, not yet. Kanata and Misella were the same kind of naive he was at their age, and Vicious-- oh, Aegis hated the way he slunk around like a panther thinking he had the entire world clenched between his rabid claws. He hated the way he spoke, he hated the way he sauntered, Aegis would go so far to say he hated everything about Vicious, only, that would have meant acknowledging him at all, so he didn’t. Instead, he ate, fought, and retreated, and that had since replaced his knight’s routine. The only thing that he thought about anymore was Rebecca and how she died so he could live a filthy life of shame and fleeing.

How foolish that he couldn’t see she loved him, and even more so that he hadn’t the heart to tell her that he didn’t love her back because he couldn’t. Instead, her ghost lingered over his shoulder, whispering into his ear all the things about himself he wanted to forget. Perhaps this was what true guilt felt like.

When they arrived at the Nation of Sin Aegis considered throwing himself into the waters to let the current sap his breath and finally take him home. He sat and he thought about it, hesitating, debating with himself until his head ached and his throat became too swollen to breathe. The moment he shook those thoughts from his mind her ghost slipped back over his shoulder, murmuring her last words into his ears,

_please, aegis, tell me you love me even if it’s a lie, please please please_

he couldn't do it, couldn't tell a single lie even as she breathed her last frail breath, and then he fumbled the knight’s pocket knife from his coat only to point it at the veins in his wrist for a brief second before dropping to the ground and weeping. He couldn't lie to a woman on her deathbed, and he couldn’t die, either, and he doesn't know which of those two failings he hated himself for more.

Vicious, silent until he forced himself to be heard, waltzed up to Aegis and grabbed him by the collar the same way one would snatch a hare by the neck and threaten to snap the darling lagomorph in two. He didn't, but seeing Aegis squirm was a prize enough. 

"I really hate guys like you," Vicious said with sarcasm thick in his growl, "you make one wrong move and you end up just like us, then the first thing you wanna do is die. Get yourself together. You decide you wanna live, and I’ll give you a do-over. Take it or leave it, because I ain’t giving you this chance again."

And Vicious pierced him with pure, concentrated sin, his heart rate soaring to three hundred beats a minute as he withered his fingers against the scorch of evil dripping crimson and black. Ripping it away felt like tearing a limb with his bare hands, until finally, he gripped his blood sin and felt more alive than he’d ever.

He felt the warmth of the spear beneath his fingertips, and somehow, he knew not what he was fighting for, only that he must keep fighting.

**+**

_(Aegis still thought, sometimes, of his parents’ house in the woods_

_and his bedroom above the liquor store. The hand-knitted blankets,_

_the smell of alcohol, and the warmth of the sun on his cheeks._

_In his dreams, he visited them in their burned-out shell of a home,_

_and he held his mother as they both cried at the sin that burned over his heart_

_for something he could never do. It'd been so long since he'd heard their voices,_

_he could hardly remember them at all beyond the whispers of praise_

_they'd given him as a child. It would never be worth endangering everyone_

_to see them one more time, though, certainly not to risk the enforcers swarming their home._

_Maybe if he'd loved Rebecca, she wouldn't have to die and damn the rest of them into hell._

_Home was a wound unfixable, one he could never heal,_

_and he couldn’t tell anymore if it was real or if he only made up_

_the memories because he needed something to fill the empty spaces._

_The result was the same regardless.)_

**+**

( _ **eleven:** the only hope for me is_)

Vicious infuriated Aegis, and Aegis’ deadly fascination with the little things about Vicious that he wouldn’t have noticed otherwise infuriated him even more. The way his smirk always cocked to the left, the sculpted plunge in the V of his hips, the rumble in his words when his voice dipped low. Vicious had already sunk his proverbial teeth in, and Aegis wouldn’t quite look at him anymore, as when he did, he could no longer look away.

"Still fuckin' brooding, huh? Doesn't suit a pretty-boy, moral-code dipshit like you."

It was as if someone had just spoken of the devil, in a very literal sense. Aegis couldn’t contain himself, summoning his blood sin and proceeding to point it at the nook under Vicious' chin he’d memorized so well. "What do you know of me!? Nothing! How dare you say such things to me!" 

Chuckling, Vicious swatted the lance as if it belonged to a fumbling child rather than the former Commander of Knights. "I know you’re one of us now, kid, and yer damn well gonna need to get used to it. That Stain’s not going anywhere."

Aegis, now armed with nothing but his own indignation, curled a fist, resting it inches away from the Transgressor's face. Vicious retaliated only by grabbing the knight by the stuffy tie around his neck and dragging their noses mere inches apart. 

"Bet you think that would feel real good. Bet that'd give you a nice little head rush for all'a thirty seconds."

And then Aegis, realizing he was only correct, collapsed himself into Vicious' ink-black coat, taking in the smell of alcohol radiating from his clothes like it was his final lifeline. What a mess he’d found himself in, ticking like a bomb on the verge of detonation, yet knowing not what was to come next. He had been caught, but didn’t dare pull away. 

Vicious jerked his hand away to rest it on the crown of Aegis' head, and his pity stung like antiseptic on a fresh wound. Another feeling he knew too well.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Just don't think I'm gonna go kissin’ you just 'cause I'm nice enough to let you cry your crocodile tears into my shoulder."

Aegis pulled away and shielded his eyes, this time much like a mourning veil rather than that of a bride. Stumbling backwards on quaking feet, he slumped himself against whatever he could find. 

"Life's a sad, sorry thing, kid," Vicious cocked a smirk that pulled to the left, dragging a crumpled cigarette from his coat pocket and summoning his blood sin to set it alight with the flames. "Everybody gets hurt, and people die. You don't learn to live with it, and you end up dead too." He then turned on the balls of his heels, leaving Aegis to tremble in his wake. 

"And eventually, yer gonna have to make that choice, you hear me?" 

Something bubbled inside of Aegis like a disease, warm and humiliating as he watched the Great Transgressor walk away with a panther's grace. The white knight had fallen for the devil incarnate; how perfectly demeaning, a metaphor for his sorry life in and of itself. He reached inside his own body and pulled out the last righteous part of himself that still existed, somewhere. He had no use for it anymore. 

**+**

_(Aegis fought alongside his new companions-turned-friends,_

_and sometimes, he was the only one left standing._

_“I still talk to them sometimes, when I sleep,”_

_he told Vicious of his parents one night._

_Vicious said back that maybe, he'd take Aegis to go see them,_

_one day-- that he’d could keep the enforcers at bay_

_if it meant Aegis could hold his family one last time._

_Aegis held his tongue, but what he longed to say next was_

_“The boy in my dreams looks like me, then my father, then like you.”)_

**+**

( _ **twelve:** again and again and again and_)

In a just world, everyone would get what they deserved. And yet, this world was not just.

The more Aegis traveled with Kanata the less he knew what he believed and the more he questioned anything, everything. One could be condemned for reasons beyond their control, one could be a transgressor but not a sinner, one could be King of Medagal and a monster walking in human skin. Aegis had become jaded, but the one thing he could be certain of was that he must fight for those who could not, to fix broken systems and right the wrongs of evil. Justice did exist, it was simply muddied, the only shade of grey left in a dichotomized word-- a photograph just slightly out of focus, a portrait littered with stains of ink.

After all had been said and done, he found himself okay with that, perhaps.

“Hey, Aegis! Dinner’s ready!” Kanata called to him from across the campfire, haphazardly shoving a bowl his way. The meal was Misella’s doing, which meant there was certain to be meat and little else; regardless, after a long day’s travel, the smell was divine, and the idea of a hot meal warmed his spirits in tune.

“Would you like some, Vicious?” Aegis asked as he poured himself some of Misella’s stew, only to look up and see the Transgressor reclining with his hands resting at the nape of his neck.

“Never thought I’d say it, but I’m almost gettin’ tired of meat. Maybe it’s just the firestarter’s cooking that’s got me down…”

Misella’s brows fell to her eyelids, and everyone could feel the temperature spike at least five degrees. “I still believe that we should get rid of Vicious.”

The bickering continued, and somehow, despite it all, Aegis couldn’t help but curl his lips into a smile, because there was some, tiny part of him that knew this was the closest he’d found to a family since he left everything behind all those years ago.

Eventually, Kanata and Misella drifted to sleep under the warmth of the fire and the overhang of blossoming spring trees, and yet, as much as Aegis tried, his mind would not dare rest.

“Looks like you’re thinkin’ about something over there, knighty-boy.”

Aegis’ eyes became heavy-lidded in reply, and all he could do was practice the agonizing art of self-control he’d learned so many years ago. “And what if I am?”

“Ooh. Cheeky.” Aegis could see Vicious lick his lips, and he couldn’t tell if he felt disgusted or if it only made him want him worse. “Y’know, yer gonna have to deal with it eventually.”

The knight’s tone was sharp, pointed. “With _what,_ exactly?” 

“Her death. Your so-called sin.” He smirked, showing his canines. A wolf, a predator, and perhaps the rabbit should have ran. “And the fact that you want to kiss me.”

Aegis’ mouth may as well have hit the ground. “ _Vicious,_ are you out of your mind!?”

“Maybe just as much as you are. Just know when you ask, I ain’t gonna say no.”

And Aegis gave in, abandoning every sense of that self-control he’d practiced for so long as if it had never existed at all. He reached over, threading his legs across Vicious’ lap and then leaned his face in to kiss him, heart welling up into his throat and feeling like he was floating, weightless. 

He kissed him again, and then again, and again. He kissed him until he could taste the salt against his lips like the ocean, until his face was hot and wet and he lost his breath against Vicious’ tongue. He then pulled away.

“I hate that you knew,” he said, heaving, and yet, trying not to wake the other two from peaceful slumber. “I hated everything about you.”

Vicious ran his fingers through Aegis’ hair, and something in him subdued. “Believe me, I know. And I had to take ya apart so you could put yourself together again. That’s somethin’ nobody can do but you.”

“Then stay with me.” Aegis’ tone softened, as if pleading. The flux of his voice was foreign, even to him, and he stopped before it, too, felt like it would devour him whole.

Vicious let out a faint laugh but didn’t respond, because someone like him was hardly a romantic like that. Instead, he pulled Aegis close so his chin rested against his sharp cheekbones, and they watched the sun rise, together.

The sky turned from black to purple to ribbons of gold and pink, and he knew it so well, because he’d watched it so many times before from the windows of the bedroom above the liquor store. He lived with regrets, so many, but with the comfort of love and family like this, if he could dare call it any of that, somehow, those things became liveable, for he no longer faced them alone. 

With the warmth of the sun on against his cheeks, his rabbit pulse beating in his chest, and the feeling of rough hands weaving through his hair, somehow, Aegis found home again.

**Author's Note:**

> By popular demand, this fic now has a part two, where Vicious takes Aegis to see his family. [You can find it here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28976370)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Undone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29008641) by [RisuMezzo (RisuAlto)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisuAlto/pseuds/RisuMezzo)




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